


Gotta Move On

by idiopathicsmile



Category: Tanis (Podcast)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 20:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6486715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idiopathicsmile/pseuds/idiopathicsmile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Set after Season One.) Sometimes you just need to take an evening off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gotta Move On

At some point a few months after Nic fell down the Tanis rabbit hole in earnest, his favorite bar in the whole city had closed. It wasn’t his fault, of course. Logically he knew the place hadn’t fallen apart because he’d stopped going, but he couldn’t shake some sense of regret, a lingering cloud of poorly defined guilt.

It also meant that he and Geoff had to settle for the place across the street, a crowded, noisy sports bar so aggressively normal there was something almost ghoulish about it. Or maybe it just felt that way to Nic, on the other side of his time in the woods. These days, the most mundane things struck him as surreal—condensation beading on the side of his beer bottle, the stack of white cocktail napkins beside it, the oldies blaring over the sound system: _Won’t you take me to Funkytown, won’t you take me to Funkytown—_

He tapped his fingers against the counter, waiting for Geoff to get back from the bathroom and wondering if anyone in history had ever genuinely enjoyed this song. Where was Funkytown supposed to be, anyway? Nowhere did the lyrics ever bother to explain. The singer was insistent about going there, but the nature of the place itself remained oddly opaque. _Talk about it, talk about it, talk about it…_

 

“Aw hey, did you pick up the first round?” Geoff’s voice in his ear made Nic startle hard enough to drop his pen mid-motion.

“Seemed the least I could—“ Nic began.

Geoff grinned and took the stool next to him. “Thanks, bud.” He reached over to give Nic’s shoulder a friendly squeeze, peered down at the cocktail napkin in Nic’s hand.

“Uh.” Nic jammed the napkin and the pen into his back pocket. “Least I could do,” he said again. He took a sip of his beer and winced. “Almost literally.”

“Not a problem,” said Geoff. “But I checked Yelp if you wanna try someplace after this.” Nic watched the words form, at least. In the din of the room, lipreading was a better bet than listening. “Found a bar about a quarter mile away that looked more your speed.” Geoff leaned in close enough to be heard, lips almost brushing Nic’s ear. “One of those hipster places with old-school arcade games.”

There was an even chance he was being mocked, but Nic found himself returning Geoff’s smile anyway. “Do they have Zaxxon?”

Geoff raised his own bottle and took a swig. “Drink up and we can go find out.”

 

Fifteen minutes later, as they made their way to bar #2 in the chilly air of the quickly darkening night, Geoff said,

“So, uh, please tell me you know that Funkytown isn’t Tanis.”

He’d caught a glimpse of Nic’s notes, then. “Not sure I can rule out anything right now,” Nic told him. “If I want to unravel the mystery, I need to chase every lead, no matter how tenuous, or even ridiculous, it might look.” He shivered a little, wishing he’d thought to bring a jacket. There was no excuse—he knew how the weather worked here. His mind had been elsewhere lately. “And don’t you think it’s, I don’t know, kind of interesting how the song never specifies if it’s a place or a state of mind? Only that you have to _keep moving_ to—”

“Nic,” said Geoff patiently, “it’s sex. Funkytown’s a metaphor for sex.”

Nic closed his mouth.

“Or maybe, like, dancing,” Geoff added.

 _Won’t you take me to Funkytown._ “That…does track,” Nic said cautiously. “But what about—”

“Y’know, you could probably use a night off from all of this,” said Geoff. From the corner of his eye, Nic caught a flicker of movement. “Hey, are you cold, because—“

“Are those two following us?” Nic interjected, nodding at a pair of figures reflected in the store window. A man and a woman in business attire—kind of weird on a Saturday night—walking briskly behind them.

“Who? Oh, them.” Geoff shrugged. “Probably? They’ve been tailing me for two, maybe three weeks.”

“Oh my god,” breathed Nic. “Do you know why? What do they want? Does it have to do with your brother?”

“No idea,” said Geoff. “I’ve never tried to talk to them.”

“What?”

“Well, they’ve never tried to talk to me. They’re just around sometimes.”

_“Why are you not so much more freaked out by this?”_

“I guess—” Geoff’s face was considering. “If I freaked out whenever weird shit happened, my whole life’d be freaking out.” He shrugged again. “Who’s got time for that, y’know? I’m remodeling a house. Trying to teach myself how to garden. Thinking of getting a dog.”

“But,” said Nic slowly, “there are people. Following you.” He started to peer over his shoulder, then stopped himself, studied the reflections in the glass instead. Man. Woman. Dark wool coats. Not much in the way of distinguishing features, at least not at twenty feet. Why had he left his pocket recorder at home?

“Long as they keep their distance, doesn’t seem like a problem,” Geoff said. At whatever Nic’s face was doing, he added, “And if it becomes a problem, I can handle myself. Tour in Afghanistan, remember?”

Geoff spoke with a casual confidence that was—oddly reassuring, but Nic was too busy boggling at him to really unpack that.

“I did tell the police when it started,” Geoff continued. “But: not much to report.”

Nic pinched the bridge of his nose. “Don’t you think we should get to the bottom of this? Go figure out what they want and who sent them?”

“Not really,” said Geoff. “They’ll still be here tomorrow. And this is your night off.”

“I am going to look into this,” vowed Nic, shoving his freezing hands into his pockets.

“Sure,” said Geoff. “And I’ll help you. Tomorrow. But right now, you owe yourself a normal night, man. Beer. Arcade games. Losing to me at arcade games.”

“But,” said Nic, “just, given the month I’ve had, a couple of mysterious strangers—”

“Anybody’d be jumpy,” Geoff said agreeably.

Nic checked the next window as they passed it; their tail was still on them.

“Hey,” said Geoff, clapping him on the back, “if it makes you feel any better, I can keep a close eye on you tonight.” Geoff shot him a sideways smile. “You know, make sure they don’t try to seduce you.”

This time, Nic knew he was being mocked. The thing was, it actually did make him feel a little better, for some reason. So did Geoff’s hand, which was now rubbing between his shoulder blades. When you got right down to it, he thought, Geoff Van Sant was a genuinely good dude.

Also it was cold out. Together, those two reasons probably explained the sudden impulse to rest his head on Geoff’s shoulder.

“By the way,” said Nic, “for the record. You are absolutely not gonna beat me at Zaxxon.”

Geoff broke off in the middle of some tuneless humming to laugh. “Well,” he said, “guess we’ll see.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Until proven otherwise it is my insistent headcanon that equally wild stuff has been happening to Geoff for the entire duration of the podcast and he is simply too laidback to really care.
> 
> 2\. It may bear mention that while I was writing this fic, my research suggested that Funkytown is not, as I'd assumed, about sex or dancing, but is instead allegedly a reference to New York City. 
> 
> It's also probably not Tanis.
> 
> (Probably.)
> 
> 3\. If you are wondering at what point Nic figures out that he is on a date, I'm gonna go ahead and say that he does put this together eventually. Like, twenty minutes into making out with Geoff.


End file.
